GIRLS OF Banda Traditional Area in the Tain District of Brong Ahafo
have expressed their loathe to the practice of Female Genital
Mutilation (FGM) to the Chiefs and people of the area.

Banda Ahenkro, a Muslim dominant community that was noted among the
communities in the country fond of practicing FGM or female
circumcision, seems to have been putting a stop to the practice due to
the effort of some Government and Non-Governmental Organization, which
led to the arrest of a 72-year-old woman circumciser about two years
ago.

In a well-rehearsed drama, girls from the Banda Boase L/A Junior
Secondary School protested that the practice was a violation of human
rights of girls and women and it is a grave threat to their health.

The multitude of people who trooped to the Banda Ahenkro Cultural
Centre expressed shock, when the girls confirmed some of the trauma
their colleagues and women pass through during this awful cultural
practice.

They revealed that FGM affect the lives of clients in many diverse
ways, which includes physical, sexual and reproductive health, mental,
social and emotional.

According to the girls, they were not against cultural or tradition
in general but they were against some cultural practices that infringed
on the rights of any individual being male or female.

Some of the complication of female circumcision like severe pain,
injury to the adjacent tissue of urethra, vagina, perineum and rectum,
bleeding shock, acute urine retention, fracture or dislocation,
infection as well as general blood poisoning were exposed in their
display.

Ghanaian Association for Women's Welfare (GAWW) was the organizer and financier of the programme.

The Executive Director of GAWW, Mrs. Florence Ali urged the Chiefs
and people of the area to listen to the plea and cry of the girls and
desist from the practice since it is contrary to the laws of the
country.

Mrs. Ali enlightened the patrons that the law provides for
imprisonment and fines for both those who request, incite, or promote
excision by providing money, goods or moral support.

She added that there was documented evidence that Female
Circumcision damages the health of girls and women, it infringes on
their rights to the highest attainable standard of physical, sexual and
mental health.

Mrs. Ali disclosed that there were international conventions
supporting the elimination of FGM, since it was associated with gender
inequities, as well as a form of discrimination against women and
girls, torturous, cruel, inhuman and degrading.

A Senior Ward Assistant at the Banda Ahenkro Health Centre, Esther
Kumi revealed that her outfit has been facing challenges when women and
girls who have been circumcised come to their end for delivery and
other sexually related cases.

She mentioned infertility, urinary tract infections on and off,
pelvic inflammatory, keloid scar, calculus formation in vagina,
difficulties in menstrual flow and problems in childbirth as some of
the problems they faced at the centre.

The Apamuhene of Banda Ahenkro, Nana Sietakyi Tanor who chaired the
function on behalf of the Traditional Council, announced that the
practice has been stopped and rituals were performed annually to pacify
their ancestors and the gods of the land during the date of their
festival.

He continued that though the practice have ceased, girls are dressed
in the same way as it was done during circumcision but now the
circumcision aspect has been removed and girls now cover some of their
sensitive parts unlike the previous times when they were totally nude
in public.